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Month: April 2015

Every morning, after breakfast, it’s time for a wander out back. I am never alone. Usually by that time, Rack the SuperDog (TM) is ready for his final excursion of the morning. He will have a full day of resting, napping, and generally watching me do my own thing until Lunch time when he tries for a morsel or two as a snack.

He usually gets some, I’m a soft touch.

Or so I have been told.

We will generally inspect the area. He has his perimeter search and if there aren’t any dreaded trash trucks in the neighborhood, he may even decide that he wants to romp a bit.

If not, I entertain myself with what goes on in the yard. There are always gardening chores to look into. The cutting pots must be watered. Orchids will have to be looked after. The Staghorn ferns probably have had their Spanish Moss tossed out of them and need to be picked up and set right.

Generally it’s a Quiet Before The Storm time of day. The neighbors aren’t usually rattling around, that’s my job. I’m the one up at stupid hours, so early that even Oscar the parrot goes back to sleep when I settle in. Going outside is a chance to think about what needs to be done, and set out a plan for the day.

All the while I am being watched.

My friends that live back there, the lizards, watch over me. Sometimes they’re watching to avoid, other times they’re actively looking for my attention. Completely harmless, quite beneficial, and normally entertaining.

I honestly think that I live in their house and they graciously allow me to remain here, at times.

But there they will be at that hour, recharging their solar batteries. You would think that they are easy pickings out in the open like that, but I have never seen them molested. I guess a creature smaller than your finger wouldn’t be worth the chase to a larger bird.

They will hang there eating the ants off my palm tree that grew too close to the house. The tree itself is on borrowed time since it’s a hazard in a hurricane, but for now it will remain. Its replacement was planted in the island in front of the house a year ago and is growing quite well, but this tree with the moss on the North Side will not remain in the long run.

Meanwhile, it provides an environment for my little Cuban Brown friends to hang upside down and dine and pose for the paparazzi that live there with them among the flowers.

As long as I don’t get too close, I may even be able to enjoy a little time with them as well. Even if this one leaves, there will be another one to take its place. Too good a spot to pass up.

So why the weak praise? If you were looking in my window at this moment, you would see me chewing on one of these right now.

But, they’re just not “sweet”. Oh sure, they’re sweet, but cookies traditionally are a sugary treat. These are a very healthy food, but since there is no added sugar, you just don’t get that “dessert-y” sugary kick out of them.

If I were to make these for a proper “snack” I would increase the amount of oats and add some honey to them.

The other drawback is that the texture for the length of time I baked them was wrong. I’d bake them longer than the 8 minutes you see listed because they were a bit “spongy”. That’s a trade off, so bake them until they’re well done and you should get something more chewy as the natural sugar in the Mango will caramelize. Longer still and you’ll get crunchy.

Anyway… These puppies will fill you up and probably should be called Granola instead. But I digress.

The Recipe – as listed made a little more than 8 cookies.

The ingredients:

4.5 ounces of Mangoes in chunks – Banana can be substituted as well as firm melons like Canteloupe or Honeydew.

1 Cup Quick Oats

1 Ounce Raisins

1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

The Process:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Chunk your Mango into a mixing bowl.

Add Quick Oats, Raisins, and Cinnamon to the Mango.

Mix with your hands the batter until evenly mixed. The batter will be the consistency of a sticky dough or modeling clay.

Measure out your cookies in one ounce servings.

Roll the cookies into a ball and then flatten them out in the palm of your hand. Thinner is best!

Place them on the cookie sheet, and since they don’t rise, they may be placed closely together.

Bake at 350F for 8 minutes for soft cookies, longer for other textures.

This was going through my mind as I walked outside into the late afternoon sun.

I was in the great windup for the evening march about town. Rack the SuperDog (TM), my faithful sidekick, needed to get out and explore the world, exercise his mind, and water a few shrubs. I was looking forward to seeing things around town after being cooped up reading accounting books all afternoon, and who knows what all else before that.

Walking to the unreasonably brilliantly white mailbox, I bend down low, grab the post from their hiding place, and start looking at what was misdelivered. Two for me, 8 for my next door neighbor.

Amusing, I’ll have to walk it over to his box.

I take one step and a cloud of Dragonflies lift from their perches in my grass.

“Oh, yeah! It’s an early wet season. Watch where I walk!”

I am slowly treading through the turf across the front of the yard. Dozens of amber and brown gems are floating on the breezes, flickering lights as they go by. It was the third day after the first rains. The Dragonflies lay their eggs in the lawn, going through their lives eating grubs that eat the turf, and generally being beneficial to man’s way of life. The rains hit and they make the transition to their next stage of life that we all see.

The timing is so that those pets that we all have and loathe so much, Mosquitoes, hatch and get out into the environment. About the only thing I can say good about them is that Mosquitoes feed the Dragonflies that I enjoy watching. Other than that I would love to put a giant Simpsonian Springfield dome over the city and fill it full of insecticides to kill the blighters off.

Step again, another cloud rises. At this time I am seeing amber waves of Dragonfly wings rising and falling. I am in a cloud right out of a Disney movie, sparkling and fluttering on the breeze. Hundreds of them flying around me as I make my way East. I leave my neighbor his collection of junk mail, and head back. This time the amber is brighter as I head into the sun.

Gently I make my way back to the house, enjoying yet another encounter with nature.

Since we have been here, we’ve fixed things. Other things we haven’t really paid too much attention to. It works, it may not be perfect but it is “Serviceable”. If it broke we could probably fix it, or replace it, or something else that would come to pass.

The mailbox was one of those things.

You don’t often give a mailbox much thought. The postie comes by, drops something in. If you’re home you say hello to Postman Pat, get your daily mail, then wander back to the house with a stop by the recycling bin.

I don’t mind getting “Junk Mail” since it’s keeping the US Postal Service in business.

But the actual box? Meh. It’s there.

The same can be said for my house that I grew up in, in the sainted land of New Jersey. Cherry Hill, NJ.

We replaced it once. I can’t remember why, but it was there. Doing its job, day in and day out.

We’d had a discussion here lately about how the old box was getting to look a bit odd. Tatty. Dirty actually.

Off at the local big box store, we’d started looking at new ones. That was started because some drunk came down our street one night and drove over the post holding the old one up. I picked up the old post and box off the ground, we pulled the concrete slug holding the thing in until that day, and slid the old post back in the hole.

Simple and elegant. Ok, so sure, the mailbox is lower now. I have to bend down lower to see what’s in there, but it works.

The flag on the West Side of the box snapped off in the process and has been mulched by the lawnmower. Long gone, I’d say.

When we were looking at shiny new boxes we realized we’d need a new post and would have to get all of that at once.

Inertia hit and we left empty handed.

That happened a couple times and finally I got annoyed at the process. Waiting for the right day, when nobody was there to say otherwise, I attacked the old box.

Early in the morning there was a complex series of events. Naturally, I’m a bit complex myself. The bottle of cleaning solution exploded under the sink due to a freak weather front coming through and making my ears pop all day. I had to clean up all that blue fluid and got A Bright Idea.

I went out to the front yard with the scrubbing pad that was sodden with cleaning solution and scrubbed the old box to a nice charcoal grey. You know, what your black T Shirt gets to look like when it’s too comfortable to toss out, but no longer black?

That’s the box. I scrubbed all the rust off the thing and it was a uniform color. Quite impressed I mentioned that we had a New To Us mailbox and walked back inside.

Until the next day.

Bright idea time. I remembered I had the tail end of some Primer White Exterior Flat Latex Paint. That’s what it called itself.

I walked outside in the heat of the day and proceeded to make myself flash blind. White Paint on a midday sunshiny day will make you walk into a door frame when you go back indoors, so be careful.

Not so bright that in two hours later I went back outside and gave the old box another coat of white.

Yes, I painted over the numbers. We need new numbers. The old ones were stuck to the side of the box and the new ones will be stuck over top of that just like those annoying registration stickers that have no purpose on your license plate.

Don’t get me started on that one. Those stickers make no sense except where they actually put the license plate number on them. But basically it’s there to keep someone in the state capitol employed. Make Work Project my father would call it and I agree.

Walking back into the house, I called it done as I banged my left shoulder on the door frame. The job was fine – good enough. Paint brushes clean.

But the thing is I nudged the apple cart and a few golden delicious fell off the other side.

In my living room are two green chairs. Mine sits close to the front window. That’s how I like it. It’s a little warmer than the other, but I can see out the window and watch the sunset. Every night that I am sitting there, I get to watch the sunset over top of the Shoppes and the palm trees. I always notice. Unfortunately some days it notices me and shines right into my eyes in brilliant subtropical laser beams. But lately it has just been pleasant.

While the old mailbox was black and unobtrusive, Zinc Oxide Primer White Exterior Flat Paint is brilliant in the Florida Sun.

While I ignored the old mailbox before, now it shined in my eye like a beacon.

It was a very bright weekend.

We watched some old sitcoms, a couple movies, and generally enjoyed domesticity when I commented.

“Now that it’s white, I keep looking at the damn thing!”What’s that?The Mailbox! It keeps catching my eye!Don’t worry about that, the sprinklers will dye it rust.We need new paint. I want some old school Barn Door Red High Gloss Paint!Yep! You’re at it again! You’re making more work for yourself. Do you think it will hide the rust?Better than the white will, I’ll have to paint the box over in a month if its left white.

And so it goes. So if you want to confuse yourself, change something that you never see into something that is brilliantly in your face. It should give you at least one conversation.

I’ve heard more than once from the neighbors that I should “DO something with it and be Creative!”. One suggested rainbow colors, another was talking about fire engine red. Safety Yellow might be an interesting suggestion, but I’m thinking Barn Door Red.

That should be close enough to the rust stains on the house. Yeah, Barn Door Red! Get the keys, we need to go to the paint store!

He stays until the bar closes at three in the morning, at which time he is extremely drunk.

After leaving the bar, he returns home on foot.

When he enters his house, he doesn’t want to wake anyone, so he takes off his shoes and starts tip-toeing up the stairs.

Half-way up the stairs though, he falls over backwards and lands flat on his back. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that he had couple of empty pint bottles in his back pockets, and they broke; the broken glass carved up his back terribly. Yet, he was so drunk that he didn’t know he was hurt.

A few minutes later, as he was undressing, he noticed blood, so he checked himself out in the mirror, and, sure enough, his behind was cut up terribly. He then repaired the damage as best he could under the circumstances, and he went to bed.

The next morning, his head was hurting, his back was hurting, and he was hunkering under the covers trying to think up some good story, when his partner came into the bedroom.

“Well, you really tied one on last night,” she said. “Where’d you go?” “I worked late,” he said, “and I stopped off for a couple of beers.”

“A couple of beers? That’s a laugh,” she replied. “You got plastered last night. Where did you go?”“What makes you so sure I got drunk last night, anyway?”

“Well,” she replied, “my first big clue was when I got up this morning and found a bunch of band-aids stuck to the mirror. “

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church, by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript.

So, the new monk goes to the Old Abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even an error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, “We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.”

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives, in a locked vault that hasn’t been opened for hundreds of years.

Hours go by and nobody sees the Old Abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing.

“We missed the R! We missed the R! We missed the bloody R!” His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

Me and my Faithful Sidekick, Rack the McNab SuperDog (TM) had already been out to the backyard.

We went out through the double doors, walked out into the sunlight, and greeted the afternoon by peeing on it.

Now, don’t be silly, not all of it. He knows not to pee on my mint because, well, it’s Mine. Besides, yuck!

There are a few oddball herbs in the garden. The Basil that I finally got the right pot to grow is right at dog nose level. It’s in a white ceramic pot that sits on the irrigation drip-feed. Rack walked right over to it and caught a scent. Sniffed it and …

“Had a nice sneezing fit did you, dog?”

He smiled at me in that content way that dogs have when they were caught doing something dumb.

I got this thought placed in my head like an induced memory “If I smile like this, he won’t tease me for being dumb, he’ll think it’s cute and smile!”

Yep. However I got that thought, it was right. I laughed.

Rack took off. Ran off around the big palm tree, leapt over the spa, then sniffed the mint again. He seems to do that at odd times.

At that point Rack bent space-time. Einstein would be amazed. His matter blurred in our own place when he launched into motion. The air behind him cracked as he first broke through the sound barrier, then approached C, the speed of light.

Interesting, boy, you usually save your inter-dimensional travel for behind the shed. His black and grey blur ran past the back end of the pool, over the stone fountain that hasn’t worked since the early part of the century, then curled around the Sea Grape tree.

Leaves were pulled out of our dimension as Rack roared past. He was now out of sight, bending distance as he ran. The turf showed where he had been as all the sudden the world went quiet. SuperDog was visiting his SuperDog family in the Dog Universe that is on the other side of the Wormhole that resides in my backyard, behind the shed.

After a gap of a few seconds, white caps formed on the pool. The usually placid waters rocked due to a vibration, a Change In The Force. I heard a dull rumble. Rack was reentering our plane of existence. Wind rustled the Hibiscus and the Coleus near the big Sea Grape tree as a black and white blur dropped out of Warp into my yard, and continued to decelerate down below the speed of sound. He did a figure eight around the Bougainvillea picking up brilliant magenta blossoms into his wake, then once around the big palm tree. He was down around the speed limit for the neighborhood as he hurled himself over the spa, and slowed to a brake near my back door.

“Are you done, boy? Time for a refuel? Need water?”

Rack looked back at me and wagged his tail as if to say “Get a move on it, you need to come inside. The mosquitoes are catching up to you!”

I padded across the yard to get to the door. “Here you go Rack, go on in.”.

He got his drink then walked over to the big green chair.

“Slow down, it’s time to relax.”

His eyes began to change from his usual glowing robotic green to yellow from left to right. Smiling, we knew all was right with him and his dog family in the canine universe on the other side of the wormhole from my little shed.

“Ok, Rack, we’ll go for a walk soon. Have a rest, it was a long trip to get back here from the other realm.”

One more implanted thought appeared glowing on my cerebellum. “Thanks, it was fun visiting the folks. My kingdom is safe.”.

“Rack, sometimes I wonder what goes on inside that furry little head of yours!”